Nominated for Nothing: The outrageous stripper saga Zola was too wild, and too female, for the Oscars

They're destined to score zero Academy Awards, but they won our attention throughout a year (and awards season) like no other. Ahead of the 94th Oscars ceremony on March 27, EW is breaking down the year's best movies, performances, and directorial achievements that were nominated for nothing.

The Film: A neon fever dream, a bad romance, a nightmare born in a tweetstorm: It all begins with a champagne room and the not-really-rhetorical question, "You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out? It's kinda long, but it's full of suspense."

In fact director Janicza Bravo's electric Florida stripper saga Zola clocks in at a scant 86 minutes. But oh, what she fits into her 2021 breakout, the first if not the last feature film to be plucked from the chaotic slipstream of social media — in this case, a now-legendary Twitter thread by a young Detroit waitress and dancer named Azia "Zola" Wells. One chronicler admiringly compared her epic tale of clubbing and criming and pimps gone rogue to "Spring Breakers meets Pulp Fiction, as told by Nicki Minaj."

Taylour Paige (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) is Zola; Riley Keough (The Devil All The Time) is Stefani, the restaurant customer and high-pony id monster who becomes her new best friend overnight. They both dance on the side, so Stefani has a totally innocent idea: Why doesn't she come on a road trip to Florida and make some easy money, just for the weekend? Her dim boyfriend (Succession star Nicholas Braun) will ride along, and a monosyllabic "roommate" (Colman Domingo), X, whose full name and motivations will be revealed in time.

What follows is a skittering, sun-drenched tale of sex and betrayal and slow-mo buttclaps so fantastically depraved that it's better not to know too much more, except that the chemistry between Paige and Keough comes in gigawatts, and that the non-Twitterati truly won't know what's coming until the last, extremely Florida frame.

Why It Wasn't Nominated: In a year where cozy, self-satisfied crowd-pleasers like Belfast and CODA are frontrunners in the race, it's not hard to see why a movie that fits in most deadly sins before the final credits roll (and a few the Pope might not have thought of yet) didn't land on the staid Academy's shortlist.

Like other recent A24 projects deemed too "uncomfortable" for Oscar voters — see Red Rocket, Uncut Gems — its recognition has mostly come from more indie outlets and critics' groups: Paige took home an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead (where Joi McMillon also snagged the Best Editing Prize), but fell short even with precursor platforms like the SAGs and Critics Choice.

Movies made by and centered on women, of course — particularly women of color — are so regularly sidelined in the awards conversation that their general exclusion has become a sort of gallows-humor cliché. Still, it probably didn't help that the film also premiered way back in the pre-pandemic mists of January 2020; that's a lot of momentum to try to sustain for more than two calendar years.

Why history will remember it better than the Academy did: Zola is just great raw material, that's a fact. It's also, to be fair, a little hollow; the kind of wildly stylized storytelling that's easier to admire than to plug into emotionally. But Bravo — who came in with one full feature to her name, 2017's Lemon — directs it with so much assurance and visual wit that what could have been a slick, soulless experiment instead finds strange little corners of empathy and insight wherever it goes.

One back-line star, at least, may still end up on stage at this Sunday's ceremony: Ari Wegner, the thirtysomething Australian who recently became only the second woman in history to be nominated in Best Cinematography, for Power of the Dog, is favored to be the first to take it home this coming Sunday. Her brilliant work in Zola probably won't get a mention, but the ones who know will pour one out for a higher Power too; Bravo's tiny surreal masterpiece, drenched in gunpowder and body glitter, and forever ready for its closeup.

EW's countdown to the 2022 Oscars has everything you're looking for, from our expert predictions and in-depth Awardist interviews with this year's nominees to nostalgia and our takes on the movies and actors we wish had gotten more Oscars love. You can check it all out at The Awardist.

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